Steven Kent - The Clone Elite

“I am company commander, and that puts me one seat away from God Almighty as far as you are concerned. Cross that line, boy, and I will fry your ass. I will personally shove my particle-beam pistol up every hole you got, then I will shove it up the new holes I make.” He stood with his face less than an inch from mine. Filaments of spit flew from his lips and splattered my cheeks.

“Will that be all?” I asked.

“I’m just getting started, Harris,” Moffat said. He was in a rage, but he kept his voice low. A vein had appeared across his forehead. It started between his eyebrows and disappeared under his hairline. His face was red with rage.

Like every officer in the Marine Corps except me, Moffat was a natural-born. He was a big man. I stood six-foot-three, and he had a couple of inches on me. He had muscular arms. His biceps and triceps bulged under the sleeves of his shirt. I could see a few small scars on his scalp under the fine brown bristle of his hair. The boy had been a tough customer; probably a football star or wrestler in college.

“If General Glade thinks you’re something special, that’s his problem, asshole!” Moffat continued. “You got that? You may have friends in high places, but I have friends of my own, asshole. Do you hear me? You try to make yourself the hero again, and I will flatten you into a specking statistic. I will turn you into K.I.A. roadkill so fast you won’t have time to wet yourself.” As he said this, he placed a hand on my shoulder.

He should not have put his hand on me. Now I found myself angered to the point that I began to have a Liberator combat reflex. The hormone was beginning to flow through my blood, soothing me and pushing me to attack at the same time. Struggling to keep my temper in check, I brushed Moffat’s hand from my sleeve. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I growled, still hoping to keep my growing need for violence in check

Huuuuhhh Huhhhh . General James Ptolemeus Glade stood at the door behind Moffat clearing his throat. At that moment, I thought his throat-clearing ceremony was meant to catch our attention. It wasn’t. I soon learned that he made the same noise during speeches, meals, and probably in his sleep.

“Is this our new man, Lieutenant?” he asked Moffat.

“Yes, sir,” Moffat said, taking a step back from me. “This is the famous Lieutenant Harris.”

“Out of my way. Moffat. Out of my way. Let’s have a look at him,” Glade said. He gave me a quick inspection, then invited Moffat and me to follow him into the admin offices. “Lieutenant Harris, I’ve read your record. It’s a pleasure to have a Marine of your caliber under my command.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, feeling more than a little off balance. Generals did not, as a rule, pay attention to the lieutenants under their command, let alone greet them.

“I hear you fought on Little Man and in the Mogat invasion. You’ve been in on the big ones, haven’t you, Lieutenant.” Then his smile tightened. “Scuttlebutt around command is that you once shot a colonel in the line of duty. Is that true, Harris?”

“I’ve heard the rumor,” I said.

“The way I hear it, it’s not just a rumor. I heard you shot Aldus Grayson,” General Glade said. “Now, I knew Grayson.”

Oh shit, I thought to myself.

Glade put on a good “plain folks” persona, but looking into his eyes, I could tell that he was shrewd and keenly aware of everything around him. “I went through Annapolis in the same class as Grayson. We graduated from the academy the same year, he and I and about ten thousand other cadets.

“I’m not sure Annapolis ever saw a more pompous, self-aggrandizing, useless cadet than Aldus Grayson, if you know what I mean—but I hate to think he was shot by one of his own.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

As I watched Glade, I realized that he had not said this for my benefit. He was delivering a message to Moffat. His eyes bore into the first lieutenant’s, expressly driving home the message with one last phrase, “Though I suppose it’s sensible to shoot dogs and officers when they go rabid.”

Only a ten-man staff worked in Glade’s administrative office. The generals and admirals I had met prior to Glade all insulated themselves with bloated staffs. Glade, who rose through the ranks on the battlefield, kept as small an entourage as possible.

“Like my offices?” Glade asked me.

“Very elegant, sir,” I said.

“Seems like a waste of space to me,” Glade said. “Now if you want to see something really impressive, you should see what the Army has done with the capitol building. They have turned that place into a world-class command center. That’s where all the real work gets done.

“This here is my office,” he added as he opened the wood-paneled door. “I spent six years assigned to the Pentagon before the Civil War broke out. I visited the offices of each of the Joint Chiefs; none of them had an office like this.”

Glade’s office was thirty feet long and thirty feet wide. He had a glass-and-pewter desk, glass shelves with recessed lighting, a white marble crown below the ceiling, and hand-annotated battle maps taped to the wood-paneled walls. Rows of leather-bound books stood in the bookshelves, and a line of fancy liqueurs rested on the ledge over the wet bar. The rug was burgundy red and more than an inch thick; the soles of my shoes sank into its cut-pile depths.

“Do you know where they got the name ‘Valhalla’?” Glade asked.

“That was Viking heaven,” Moffat said. “That was the home of the Norse gods.” He had a smirk on his face that said, “You don’t get an education like that in clone orphanages.”

“Good, Moffat. Did you take humanities in the academy?” Glade asked.

“Yes, sir,” Moffat said.

I, too, had read a little Norse mythology. Unlike the gods of the Greek and Roman eras, the Norse gods could die. They expected to ultimately lose the battle of good and evil. I did not volunteer that information.

Huuuuh. Huuuuh. “Lieutenant Harris, I had a chat with Admiral Brocius before you arrived. He speaks very highly of you. He recommended that I provide you with anything you want and stay out of your way. I must say, Lieutenant, I am not used to giving my junior officers that kind of latitude.” He looked at me for a response.

I did not know what to say, so I remained silent.

“Do you have any questions, Lieutenant?” Glade asked.

“No, sir,” I said.

“As I understand it, Admiral Brocius briefed you about our situation, is that right?”

I looked over at Moffat. He tried to give me a threatening glare, but it looked more imploring than menacing. “I understand a friend of mine has been sent here as a civilian advisor.”

“You mean Freeman,” Glade said. “Admiral Brocius tells me that you’ve worked with him before.”

“He’s a friend of yours?” Moffat said. “Interesting piece of work …I thought his kind was extinct.”

Glade glared at Moffat. “What do you mean, Lieutenant?”

“Have you seen him? He’s a black man. An African. There aren’t supposed to be races anymore, but Freeman, his skin is black as tar.”

The room went silent for several seconds before Glade spoke up. “Is there a point you wish to make, Lieutenant Moffat?”

“No, sir,” Moffat said. Thickheaded as he was, he was bright enough to know that he had just stepped on a land mine.

“Ever heard of Shin Nippon?” Glade asked. Everybody knew about Shin Nippon, the all-Japanese colony. After the role Shin Nippon played in ending the Civil War, the U.A. Senate allowed the racially pure people of Shin Nippon to form a nation within a nation and settle the Japanese islands on Earth. “Welcome to the twenty-sixth century, Marine. Races still exist, and will exist as long as there are humans to preserve them.”